Juran, Wade-Giles romanization Chü-jan (flourished 10th century, Zhonglin, near present Nanchang, Jiangxi province, China) Chinese painter of the Five Dynasties (907–960) period, he was one of the most innovative artists working in the pure landscape tradition.

Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. Katherine Holden Thayer

Little is known of Juran other than that he was a Buddhist priest (Juran is a priestly name—his family name is never mentioned) and that he worked for the court of the southern Tang in what is now Nanjing. In 975 or shortly thereafter, he followed Li Houzhu to the Song capital Bianliang and gradually gained a reputation as a painter. He was supposedly a follower of Dong Yuan, a similarly little-known painter of the Five Dynasties in the court at Nanjing. No certain authentic works survive, but those considered to be in his style and in that of his teacher Dong make use of relaxed fibrous brushstrokes, wet ink washes, and rounded contours. The works are evocative of the landscape of southeast China. The two artists became increasingly revered in later ages by critics who saw in their softly evocative paintings the paradigm of the attitude that would characterize the literary man (wenren).

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...The contrast between the firm brushwork and dramatic compositions of such northern painters as Jing Hao and his followers and the more relaxed and spontaneous manner of Dong Yuan and his follower Juran laid the foundation for two distinct traditions in Chinese landscape painting that have continued up to modern times. The style developed by Dong Yuan and Juran became dominant in the Ming...